Go read THE FURY OF FIRESTORM #12

Quit goofing around on the internet. Go read The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Men #12 in stores today! This issue is written by Joe Harris, penciled by Yildiray Cinar and Daniel HDR, inked by Marlo Alquiza and Walden Wong, cover by Yildiray Cinar and Marlo Alquiza, colored by Hi-Fi, and lettered by Travis Lanham! This issue the quest for Ashra Khan takes a new turn, and the menace of Zither is revealed! After this issue, only one more with the current creative team. Issue #0 is shaping up to be an explosive conclusion to a year-long blockbuster of a story!

Without getting into spoilers for anyone who hasn’t read this yet, all I will say is the Jurgens’ run can’t start soon enough. I’ve been a cheerleader for this book since launch, and even I sit back and look at these 12 issues and wonder what the point was.

I really liked the Firestorm character, but this full year was totally lost to me. I mean, and SPOILERS ALERT, in the way the book ended perfectly you could say than Dan Jungens is going to start the book from ground zero. Just let’s hope is not to late. But considering than usually Jurgens is given doomed books, I fear than this stage of Firestorm is close to his end.
Prove me wrong, Dan.

I hear you, all of you. I feel like I felt after the LOST finale. Where are my answers?!

What was Fury to begin with? Were all these merged Firestorms some unforeseen side effect or what? What really happened to Martin Stein? Where’s Asha Kahn? Was Arkadin in cahoots with him, or was Arkadin actually Asha Kahn? How did Zither and Zithertech come to be in control of the Firestorm protocols— did the kill Martin and fake some documents willing Martin’s work to them?

Here’s how I’ve decided to look at it. What this was was a 12-issue origin story for the Jason/Ronnie merged Firestorm. And now the story actually begins.

It was indeed dire as an issue and as a wrap up, but I’m relieved it’s all over now. I wish they’d just start again after the zero issue with a new issue #1, that way it puts some distance between Firestorm and the Van Sciver approach and sends a clear message to readers who voted with their feet over it.
Still, at least there’s a chance with the Zero issue acting as a jump on point and Dan Jurgens arrival sending out the message things will be more straight forward and lighter in tone, I do wish Jurgens was paired with a good writer though…

It seems to me that DC is making every effort to not have to cancel any of their books featuring potential Justice League Members. They are giving Firestorm, Hawkman and Green Arrow a bit longer of a leash than they gave to some of the other titles they have axed so far. If they are really trying to not let these books fail, I hope the advertise the heck out of the Firestorm “reboot” and stress the fact that it’s a “back to basics” version of the character. I would also hope that he makes it into the pages of the Justice League book itself very soon, just as a way to reintroduce the character to a lot of readers.

In an attempt to not be completely negative about the first year of this book, I will say something I never thought I’d care enough to say about any book, but this run has had some really, really excellent lettering. I’m not joking about that, I really liked the way the word balloons were created, and the font is great.

It’s interesting to reflect on the ‘new52′ one year on and note how many other bad decisions and treatments have come out of DC. Apart from Firestorm I was looking forward to a Captain Atom revival, what I got was not Captain Atom. I was really excited about James Robinson’s proposed Hawkman, what I got was unreadable and not Hawkman to my mind. I was Initially a fan of the Green Arrow revival, that quickly dissipated with the lacklustre writing and direction and a lack of any strong lead character. Superboy is another who while not terrible suffers from a certain blandness and lack of plausible character. I don’t quite know why his book exists.

On the one hand you can argue DC are being experimental with these characters, all well and good, but given it’s a reboot and the experiment fails so badly is the character recoverable under those circumstances? It’s what really worries me about Firestorm, the perdeption of another failed series meaning he isn’t a popular or viable character when in fact the truth is he’s been a victim of circumstance and disasterous decisions from editorial and lead writer. Same goes for all of the above characters true, but Firestorm gets the short end of the stick more than they do to my mind. We could have had Peter Thomasi or Geoff Johns in theory, instead it was a semi-hot artist wanting to try at being a writer…. and failing disasterously.

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The Source for DC Comics' Nuclear Man – Firestorm! You'll find anything and everything Firestorm-related here. We cover things such as: news, comics, merchandise, toys, apparel, cartoons, creator interviews, podcasts, and commentary about the character. This site is maintained by The Irredeemable Shag and is not affiliated with DC Comics in any way.